


The Future's No Place to Leave Your Better Days

by brassmama



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU after Episode 12, F/M, Fix-It, Spoiler: Ben Doesn't Die in this Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-11 12:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4435925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brassmama/pseuds/brassmama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ben saw Fisk, he knew he was going to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Future's No Place to Leave Your Better Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Azek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azek/gifts).



> Gift for Az-ek (silent-syren on tumblr). Title from "Cry Freedom" by the Dave Matthews Band.

 The moment Ben saw Fisk, he knew he was going to die. Karen had tried to warn him.

A lot of people will say your life passes before your eyes when you’re about to die; mostly, Ben just tried to keep breathing...

 

* * *

_1981, New York City._

 

 

Ben Urich knew he was going to have a good day when the woman at the information desk greeted him by saying, “Hello Gorgeous.”

He was trying to track down information about complaints about mishandled Veteran’s Affairs cases, but after being routed in circles of phone transfers, he’d found the address and caught a cab.

The woman was herself gorgeous, and her smile dazzled him. “Hello Handsome.”

Doris, as her name tagged identified her, leaned across the desk a bit. “How can I help you, Mr…?”

“Ben.”

“Mr. Ben?” Her eyes crinkled further as she clearly tried not to laugh.

Ben realized what he’d said and coughed before correcting himself, “I mean, Urich, my name’s Ben Urich. I’m a reporter with the-”

Her expression dampened with recognition, though she kept a polite smile. “Mr. Urich, what exactly can I help you with? I do hope you understand I can’t tell you any confidential information.”

Ben frowned. Someone must have told Doris, and probably everyone with access to the information he was looking for, that he was persona non grata. He may as well be blunt.

“Did your bosses circle the wagons and tell you not to tell me anything?”

Doris gave him a hard look. “You’ve been making a bit of a splash. And unless you have a personal matter, I can’t give you any information.” She then looked very obviously across to an open office door. Ben looked, and could see a white man staring at him before darting eyes back down to his desk.

“Well, on a personal matter then, Doris, how would you like to get some coffee later?”

* * *

Doris had basically straight up told him she had access to what he need, and then some, over coffee. She was more than willing to make copies of what she could and be his source.

“I noticed the inconsistencies starting about two months ago, and my boss told me that it was a clerical error and to forward the files to him. But the files weren’t getting cycled back, like they would if they’d just needed corrections and then refiled. I’ve been keeping my head down and noting file numbers. I was going to take them to our legal department, but then you started calling about it and I got the impression that legal is planning to cover this up if possible. My boss is set to get reassigned soon and the new fella is basically a carbon copy.”

Ben had his notepad open, jotting all he could down. He just need copies of those files and his editor would eat this up. Everyone cared about veterans, and a story unveiling injustice in the VA system would get more than a little attention, to say the least.

At the time, Ben would admit, he hadn’t thought about what would happen after the story broke. He figured it would ruffle some feathers and he’d getting some shoulder-patting. A federal investigation was a likelihood. He hadn’t expected it to blow open a much deeper problem in the system that involved kickbacks to a state representative and Doris being named a primary witness.

Things grew very quickly to beyond Ben’s realm of experience, and when Doris showed up at his postage stamp apartment, drenched and telling him someone had been following her, Ben hadn’t thought, he’d just let her in and locked the door.

He’d needed a new door and lock after that.

After the police had let them leave, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to go home and started trying to think of the least seedy motel near his place while he saw Doris home. She lived with two other women, and Ben didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.

They took the subway, and when Doris got up at her stop, she’d just grabbed his hand and dragged him along. He protested, but the train had already pulled away.

“Don’t think that I didn’t notice you ain’t got a place to stay tonight, Ben.” Doris had scolded him. “And don’t even consider that I’m going to let you go back to that apartment. Least I can do is offer you the couch.” And she started toward the stairs up to the street.

Ben kept up with her. “But, won’t your roommates mind?”

“Only if I end up kicking one of their fellas off the couch when I get there.”

And clearly, that was that.

* * *

 

Ben stayed on the couch for three nights. Doris had kicked someone’s little brother off the couch to go sleep elsewhere. “He’ll be fine. His sister is at work anyways.”

Doris had made sure he’d gotten his door replaced before she’d even hear about him not staying over. They’d fought about it. No yelling, but there had been short words to match flaring tempers. And by the end of it she’d been close to just throwing him out, if she hadn’t felt responsible for the whole thing.

“How is this your fault? It was my article that started this mess!” Ben hissed. Then considered his words and what had happened. “What were you even doing in my neighborhood anyway?”

Which is when Ben found out Doris had been quietly pressured into leaving her job, and that her new job as a waitress had her only a few blocks away when she’d seen the man following her.

So, clearly, Ben decided, he actually was at fault.

“Uh uh. Don’t even start that. I was poking my nose in this before you even caught a slight breeze, Ben Urich. I am perfectly capable of getting myself in trouble.”

Ben slumped back into the couch, which was still made up from his sleeping on it the night before. “I guess so, but at least see that I could have been more careful. It was stupid of me to put your name out there. Even if I didn’t think this was going to be as big as it was.”

“Well, it is what it is, and we both are going to have to live with it.” Doris sat next to him. “I am glad you were there to help get the word out for me though, as bad as I feel about your door and everything else that has happened.”

Ben gave her a half smirk at that. “How did I get lucky enough to meet you, handsome?”

“You are just that good at turning heads, gorgeous.” She pecked him on the cheek. “I’ve got to head for work or I’m gonna be late, but I really hope you don’t go back to that apartment until that door is fixed.”

“I guess I won’t.” He kissed her in return. One of her roommates came out of the bathroom in time to make faux scandalized complaints at them until Doris and Ben left, headed their separate ways to work.

* * *

Ben and Doris talked about going to Paris, a lot. They’d been planning to go for their honeymoon, but neither of them could get time off work. Doris had finished her degree in literature and gotten a job teaching at a high school. Ben had moved over to the Bulletin and been working to reorganize their investigative journalists into less of a “liability inducing mess of hack writers”, as Ben’s boss had explained to him when he’d been hired.

But Paris was the dream. Go stay in a building older than the United States, walk the streets, go to some museums.

The almost went in 2010, after Doris turned 50, but then Harlem had a run in with two military experiments gone terribly wrong and no one was getting out of the city. Ben had covered the destruction and the shit show recovery efforts afterward. He’d actually managed to get the whole paper’s landlines blocked by FEMA because he’d exposed so much mismanagement. He wasn’t, however, the one who started throwing around comparisons to Katrina. That had been MSNBC... using his article as their fulcrum.

He’d returned home after one of those long dismal days and just wanted to sit on the couch, hugging Doris. She had sat him at the table instead, and made him pasta and tea. He made noise about something harder, but Doris just scoffed at him. She knew just as well as he did that getting to work hungover was something no one wanted, especially at his age. "You aren't some young party boy any longer." She leaned over his shoulder, hugging his neck. “I’m sorry this stretches you so thin, Ben. It’s so hard to watch, but I know you’d be miserable if you weren’t in the thick of this.”

Ben leaned his head back, relaxing as best he could into her embrace. “I’m a reporter, it’s who I am.”

After dinner, they did sit on the couch, reading in companionable silence until Ben started nodding off and Doris dragged him to bed. She also was of the opinion they were too old to sleep on the couch.

* * *

Ben had already been in a less than focused state because of Doris’ recent diagnosis. His work had started to suffer for it, since he was spending more and more time driving her places and staying home as much as he could.

Then a giant hole in the sky had happened, and Ben had spent 36 hours trying to get whatever information he could about what was happening. The whole time he had wanted to pass it off to someone else and go back to Doris. It took him 12 hours to get a call through to her to assure her, and himself, that both of them were alright and that she needed to get the neighbor girl if she had an emergency.

New York was a mess after that, too many people who had their pictures posted on boards and social media. Too much rubble and debris blocking major access routes. Too many people trying to simultaneously get out of New York to some place safer and trying to get into the city, hoping to help with recovery efforts.

Ben had finally dragged himself back home, and Doris was sitting with a book, reading by candle light. The power had gone down that afternoon when one of the “space whales” had caused the building it was on to give way while a crew had been trying to lift it away.

She put her book down and waited for him to sit before she hugged him. “You’re home.”

“Until I get a better girl.” Ben joked.

She playfully smacked at him, “You can’t get a better girl.”

When Ben got called to come in eight hours later, Ben just said “Today, I need to be with my wife.” and hung up, knowing Ellison was probably doing the same.

 

* * *

  _Now._

 

Ben’s throat hurt, and his lungs hurt, and his chest hurt. Really, he’d be hard pressed to find something that didn’t hurt. A woman was holding his head in her lap, fingers against his neck. She was saying something into a cell phone, but he couldn’t understand her. She looked down and saw his eyes were open and asked him something.

He shook his head hard, not sure where Fisk had gone and only sure that she needed to leave. He half turned his head, and caught sight of a dark clad figure standing by what was left of his door. It was the Masked Man, looking somewhat worse for wear. Well, that was something.

Things got murky after that. He remembered being carted through a hospital. He remembered the woman staying with him. At some point she’d introduced herself as Claire. She gave him a run down that the Masked Man had called her after he'd surprised Fisk, interrupting his attempted murder.

When he got himself together enough to realize that no, he hadn’t died, and that no, he wasn’t going to have much luck asking anyone to let him call his wife because his larynx was bruised and a doctor who looked about 12 was explaining to him that it was really best that he not talk at all for the next couple days. Also that he had a concussion, and fractured ribs. Ben wrote out a note that someone needed to find Karen Page and make sure she was okay and that he needed to speak with someone at the FBI.

Claire hung around as much as she could, apparently she was a nurse who worked here. Police came by, posting themselves near his room, and he was put on edge. It had seemed likely that at least some of the police force had to be in Fisk’s pocket, and Ben remembered all too well what had happened to Blake. He got Claire to call Nelson and Murdoch. She clearly knew them, or at least Murdoch, from the way she was talking to him with familiarity and holding his elbow when he seemed to clip the doorway, causing a wince. Murdoch looked like 5 miles of rough road, but that could have been in part because of the early hour and a tough night previous. It was hard to tell 

Ben tried not to think too hard about how she knew both this meddling lawyer and the Masked Man. He didn't succeed, but he tried.

Murdoch wanted to know what had happened, so Ben wrote out what he knew. All of it. Including that he and Karen Page had gone Upstate and that she had thought something had tipped off Fisk to their visit. Claire read aloud as Ben went. Murdoch asked questions about what evidence remained in Ben's home and then left the room to call his associate and to check on Karen.

Ben flipped to the next page in the legal pad, writing out a short statement of fact before tapping it to get Claire's attention, as she was watching Murdoch in the hall.

She looked down, read the page, and Ben could see the corners of her lips tighten with her attempt not to react. He'd written, "Unless Murdoch got mugged since I last saw him, I'm guessing he got those bruises interrupting Fisk."

Claire cast a look over at Murdoch before back to Ben. "I don't have a single idea what you're talking about, Mr. Urich. Maybe this is something you should address with Mr. Murdoch." she smiled knowingly.

Later, when Ben's throat was in less blinding agony, he did bring up why he was rather sure the Masked Man, sorry, Daredevil -it was only a slightly less terrible name, and his lawyer were the same person.


End file.
